Common Call Center Metrics Mistakes: Part 2

Last week on our blog, we talked about a couple call center metrics that typically get measured or interpreted incorrectly. This week we’re back to finish up that list, so your call center can be on the road to success and improvement. If you missed last week’s post, click here to check out the first half of the list. Without further ado, here’s part two!

Service Levels

One of the most common call center metrics is “service level.” This metric tells the percentage of calls that are answered within a predetermined amount of time, and displays both pieces of information. To clarify, a common benchmark for a call center is to achieve an “80/20” service level, meaning that 80% of calls are answered within 20 seconds. This average is generally a top priority for call center managers, but those numbers are not an industry standard and may not necessarily be the best goal to strive for without proper analysis. While 80/20 is a good number to achieve, its origins as the “standard” are fairly baseless and arbitrary. Realistically, a call center’s service levels should be formulated upon its resources and expected call volume. It takes deep number-crunching and analysis, but the result is a worthwhile metric that you can accurately measure performance against.

Abandonment Rate

An abandoned call is one where the caller hangs up before an agent is able to answer the call. Therefore, “abandonment rate” is the percentage of all inbound calls that are abandoned. Yet another incredibly popular call center metric that’s incredibly easily misunderstood. There are a handful of mistakes that can make for a misleading result when measuring abandonment rate, ranging from incorrectly classifying calls as “abandoned” to setting the bar far too low to reasonably achieve. While it’s good to eliminate abandonment as much as possible, it shouldn’t come at the expense of accurate and helpful metrics.

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